


no fear, no regret

by nonisland



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Community: makinghugospin, Established Relationship, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Making Out, Multi, Originally written in 2013, Polyamory, Truth or Dare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:14:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23943736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonisland/pseuds/nonisland
Summary: The moment when everything goes from “no more awkward than usual” to “horrifically awkward” is precisely synchronous with the moment when Musichetta says, to Marius, in response to his rather uncertain request for a dare, “Make out with Éponine.”
Relationships: Cosette Fauchelevent/Marius Pontmercy, Cosette Fauchelevent/Marius Pontmercy/Éponine Thénardier
Comments: 9
Kudos: 31
Collections: Les Misérables Kink Meme





	no fear, no regret

**Author's Note:**

> Repost of a fill I wrote back in, egad, 2013 [over at the Les Mis kink meme back when it was still makinghugospin, for the prompt "Some of the Amis and friends are playing Truth or Dare. Marius gets dared to make out with Eponine, it goes way too far, Cosette is super turned on and wants to get in on the action" (second fill down)](https://lesmiskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/10070.html?thread=7447382#cmt7447382).
> 
> As I said at the time: a) this uses the stage musical’s characterization; b) various other people have also definitely made out, but I was in grave danger of getting lost in tangents and unlike Hugo decided to restrain myself; and c) this narrowly escaped being called “Do I Dare?” until I decided that if I insisted on titling my ridiculous partygames musicalverse-OT3 shenanigans after a line _from_ the musical it was _still not allowed to be from “One Day More”_. You’re welcome.
> 
> * * *

The moment when everything goes from “no more awkward than usual” to “horrifically awkward” is precisely synchronous with the moment when Musichetta says, to Marius, in response to his rather uncertain request for a dare, “Make out with Éponine.”

Anyone else would have known better (well, except maybe Enjolras, but Enjolras is the worst at dares that are any fun for _anyone_ , so he wouldn’t have done it anyway), but Musichetta is even shorter on free time than Feuilly and she only managed to meet Éponine a few weeks ago. It isn’t as if they go around _introducing_ Éponine as “this is Éponine, she’s been in love with Marius probably since they were kids, don’t dare him to kiss her, you’ll break her heart.”

Come to think of it, Cosette thinks a little hysterically, Marius might be the only other person in the room who doesn’t know. She can _feel_ his discomfort, the way he’s turned into an awkward bundle of bones and angles at her side, but she’s not sure how much of that is just his general... _Mariusness_.

She looks around. Jehan has his eyes squeezed shut. Bossuet, next to an uncharacteristically grim-looking Grantaire, looks suspiciously like he’s just been elbowed hard in the ribs (which is hardly fair—he might be half-responsible for having introduced Musichetta to them in the first place, but it’s not his fault she didn’t _know_ ); Musichetta, on his other side, isn’t smiling anymore. Courfeyrac looks horrified.

Éponine looks like a woman facing martyrdom: terrified and exalted all at once. Only the bitter twist of her lips—a rueful, resigned quirk that tugs at something in Cosette’s chest—ruins the illusion.

Cosette doesn’t _pity_ Éponine. Pitying Éponine is dangerous and stupid and frankly rude, because Éponine is brave and selfless and brilliant and determined and sexy and a lot of other things Cosette always wanted to be when she grew up, and also she’s absolutely vicious when really on the defensive in a way that would surprise only people who are just meeting her now. But…Cosette doesn’t want to make this worse, and she doesn’t want to be the one to make the decision for Éponine.

Marius is still a human-shaped pile of worry and awkwardness when Cosette twists to face him. “It’s okay,” she says quietly. “I don’t mind if you do.”

He swallows, nods, and looks across at Éponine. “Is it okay with you?” he asks.

Éponine laughs.

Half the room flinches. Cosette feels the laugh as an ache bursting under her breastbone, itching in the palms of her hands.

“Is it okay with _you_?” Éponine asks. When Marius nods she looks surprised, but not too surprised to cross immediately and kneel in front of him. “Well?” Everything about her is armored—the set of her shoulders, the angle of her chin, the tight curl of her hands at her sides. She looks like she’s expecting to be sent back with nothing, or a quick hard peck, after all.

Marius sits up properly and leans forward, his hands coming up to Éponine’s jaw. He isn’t so much framing her face as cradling it; Cosette remembers how it had felt the first few times he’d kissed her (the first few times he’d kissed _anyone_ ), how gentle he’d been, how reverent, how _cherished_ she’d felt.

She thinks Éponine might have stopped breathing. Her eyes are open, unfocused; her fists are trembling.

“Éponine?” Marius asks carefully. His fingers still on their sweep over her cheekbones.

“Just _do it_ ,” Éponine says, gulping air like she’s drowning, about to sink again.

(“I am so, so sorry,” Musichetta is saying somewhere very far away, her words almost lost under the drumbeat of Cosette’s pulse in her ears. “I had no idea—”)

Marius does. Éponine’s mouth is still open a little but he kisses her just as sweetly and softly and seriously as he’d kissed Cosette—and oh, Cosette realizes on a rush of surprise that feels like falling, he’d _never_ kissed anyone but her before, not even on a dare, and now he has, and she hadn’t thought about that before, and she doesn’t know what she’s feeling now.

And then his lips part against Éponine’s and all the breath rushes out of her in a wounded gasp and her hands uncurl and she’s clinging to him, one hand around his shoulder and the other in his hair.

Apparently some of what Cosette is feeling now is _actually, this is kind of hot_ , for which she is probably going to go to hell because she’s pretty sure she shouldn’t think Éponine’s overwhelmed urgency is anything other than tragic. Or something. Something that sounds less like pity.

If she’d kissed Marius like this herself back then would he have just gone with it the way he is now? Because he is, he’s letting Éponine bite at his lips and lick her way deeper into his mouth and from the way his ears and the back of his neck are flushing he’s getting kind of into it himself. One of his hands moves from Éponine’s face to her shoulder, trailing lightly down her neck, and she shivers and finally closes her eyes, leaning further into him as he steadies her. Any closer and she’s either going to be in his lap or they’re both going to be on the floor, depending on whether or not they overbalance.

Cosette’s heart is pounding, her breath ragged and shallow. She folds her fingers against her palms. She wants, she can admit—if only to herself—that she wants to see that, either of those, Éponine straddling Marius or pinning him to the floor or _anything_ , really, she wants Marius to keep kissing Éponine but she wants Éponine to kiss her, too, wild as lightning, she wants—she can’t want, she shouldn’t, she doesn’t even know if Éponine is into _anyone but Marius_ , let alone girls, and Marius, Marius is only doing this because Musichetta dared him, he doesn’t—

Éponine’s hand tightens in Marius’s hair and he makes a soft, high noise in the back of his throat, so quiet Cosette thinks she and Éponine are the only ones who can hear it. It hits her like sunburn, uncomfortable heat prickling across her skin, because she _knows_ that sound, that’s Marius painfully turned on and about to stop being reverent, what the _fuck_ did Éponine do and _will she teach Cosette_ , would it work _on_ Cosette, what if _this_ might work?

Marius pulls Éponine closer, or she moves herself, Cosette isn’t sure which, but next thing she knows Éponine has her legs around Marius’s waist and he has his hand splayed at the small of her back and his lips on her throat and Enjolras is shouting “For _God’s sake_!”

Cosette tears her eyes away from Marius and Éponine and realizes to her own horror that she’s breathing almost as hard as either of them and one of her hands is practically in her mouth and also that _everyone is staring_.

She’s pretty sure that Enjolras wasn’t the first person to try to get their attention, either. Bahorel is eyeing the sprinkler system in a frankly worrying way.

When she looks back at Marius and Éponine, because at least _they_ weren’t watching her, Éponine is halfway back across the circle, looking horrified, and Marius is staring at Cosette, looking horrified and guilty.

“Uh,” says Cosette, trying to make her brain work. “It’s—it’s your turn?”

“What?”

“We’re playing truth or dare?” Her voice cracks it into a question.

“We—right, yes, we are, I—yes. I.”

“Dare,” Combeferre says quietly. Cosette is going to send him a fruit basket. _Multiple_ fruit baskets.

Marius blinks. “Um.”

“You’ll regret it when I get to the high notes, but all right,” Combeferre says, and starts singing some old ballad Cosette doesn’t recognize.

He’s surprisingly good, and everyone except Marius and Éponine and Grantaire lets themselves be distracted. Éponine is slumped half onto Grantaire’s lap, and he’s eyeing Marius warily, and Marius is looking at Cosette like she’s just sprouted fangs and is about to bite his head off. “It’s okay,” Cosette whispers, putting an arm around his shoulders. His hair brushes her bare arm and she tries really hard not to wonder again what Éponine did—pull it? scratch his scalp? something totally unrelated?—because this is _not the time_.

“I kissed her,” Marius says tragically.

It’s not as quiet as it should have been, and Cosette shushes him because their friends are all very nosy people and it’s a miracle they’re all pretending to care about Combeferre’s pretending Marius actually got himself together enough to offer a dare. “I know,” she says. “I was sitting right here the whole time, it’s okay.”

“Why didn’t you stop me?” That one was even louder, and Cosette’s stomach drops in dismay. Éponine flinches. Grantaire looks like the only thing keeping him from punching Marius is the fact that he’d have to move Éponine to do so.

Cosette scrambles for a good answer and comes up with, “I didn’t know you wanted me to.”

“I didn’t!”

She has never, ever been so grateful for Marius’s total lack of brain-mouth filter, because Éponine’s head snaps up, her eyes gone wide and wondering.

“Okay,” Cosette says. She hopes she sounds soothing instead of triumphant.

“No, I’m _sorry_ , I mean I—”

Cosette strokes his hair. “I know,” she says. “It’s okay.”

Nobody else is even pretending to be paying attention to the game anymore, which means she has to get them out of here soon. This isn’t a talk to be having in a room with nearly a dozen unconnected people. But Marius is being _so terribly Marius_ about it all and she can’t just drag him out; he’ll think she’s angry at him, and honestly he’s going to tell everyone anyway because that’s what Marius _does_ when he has feelings.

She puts her mouth against his ear and breathes, “Do you know why I didn’t stop you?” He shakes his head. She ducks back just in time to avoid being hit in the nose, then leans in again. “Because I didn’t want to.”

He sits back, startled, and really looks at her for the first time since he kissed Éponine. She looks back, as levelly as she can, knowing she’s still flushed and her mouth is still bitten red, her whole body humming with nerves and anticipation and hope.

“You...didn’t want to?”

Cosette darts a glance at Éponine, who’s sitting up now, thoughtful, speculative. Not dismissive. Cosette feels her heart do a little skip against her ribs. “I didn’t want to,” she says, since Marius already announced it to the room and _everyone already knew anyway_. “And I think we should have the rest of this conversation outside.”

“Right,” Marius says, looking dazed again.

“Come on, Éponine,” Cosette says, tugging Marius to his feet.

Someone over to the right whistles. Éponine flips the room in general off and follows Cosette and Marius through the door.


End file.
